KEY CONCEPTS AND METHODS

While high-quality scholarship focuses exclusively on either language policy in the region (Cashaback, Reference Cashaback2008; Ciscel, Reference Ciscel2007; Fierman, Reference Fierman2009b) or on developments within the sphere of schooling (Blum, Reference Blum2007; Johnson, Reference Johnson2010; Silova, Reference Silova2010a), the interface between language policy and schooling merits its own treatment. Schooling is the primary state institution for reproducing (or interrupting) sociocultural and historical identities and knowledge. Language policy and use in schools influences, in sometimes unexpected ways, the vitality of languages. As Besters-Dilger (Reference Besters-Dilger2007) noted, instruction is understood to be a “crucial area” that “will decide the fate of the Ukrainian language, since as many are convinced, the use of the language . . . will have a decisive impact on the language preferences of Ukrainian youth” (p. 258). I adopted a broad conception of language policy to guide the selection of research for this article. It includes the sociocultural appropriation of policy, that is, the ways that “normative policy discourse get[s] negotiated into some politically and culturally viable form” (Levinson, Sutton, & Winstead, Reference Levinson, Sutton and Winstead2009, p. 778). It also considers policy as a “legally backed mechanism to organize, manage or manipulate language behaviors” (Bulajeva & Hogan-Brun, Reference Hogan-Brun2010, p. 80).

In conducting a review of research published about a region in which 200 languages are used, one inevitably faces the politics and inequities of the language(s) of publication, research, and access (Altbach, Reference Altbach, Altbach, Arnove and Kelly1989). Any such project requires clear parameters. To cover such a broad region over a long historical period in all of the relevant languages would require a monograph. To work broadly across space, I needed a focused approach to both time and language. In an effort to avoid privileging research in the author's regional languages (i.e., Estonian and Russian), I confined this review to research published in English by scholars who have drawn on sources in the languages of the post-Soviet state(s) of focus. I incorporated (primarily) peer-reviewed research, and at the editor's request, I focused on research published within the last 5 years (since 2007). Such decisions involve trade-offs, and I hope that the productive scholars in the field will undertake some of the alternative possibilities.

A focus on language policy and schooling in post-Soviet states invites the question: Why continue to group and consider these countries together more than 20 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union? Researching language policy and education in this region, whether this particular space is labeled post-Communist (Bulajeva & Hogan-Brun, Reference Hogan-Brun2010), post-socialist (Silova, Reference Silova and Silova2010b), or post-Soviet (Ciscel, Reference Ciscel2008; Kulyk, Reference Kulyk2013), points to strong links between the Soviet past and the post-Soviet present. The territory defined by the former Soviet Union continues to be meaningful in researchers’ geographic frames, and their exploration of the changing ways “post-Soviet” is constituted and contested. That said, it is important to acknowledge that the post-Soviet space hardly constitutes a coherent whole. Rather, the post-Soviet states “compose a cluster of disparate cultural and historical experiences and, no less importantly, a set of separate languages” (Annus, Reference Annus2012, p. 25). This territory includes a diversity of cases: countries with histories of varying periods of independence in the early 20th century (e.g., Azerbaijan, the Baltic states, Georgia, and Ukraine), others with only 20 years of state-building experience concentrated exclusively in the post-Soviet period, some that are closely aligned politically and culturally with Russia (e.g., Belarus), others that are part of the European Union (e.g., Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), many that have culturally and ethnically bifurcated populations in certain regions (e.g., Ukraine, Estonia), several regions (e.g., the Chuvash Republic within the Russian Federation) and states (e.g., Kazakhstan) that were highly Russified, and many others where the national language dominates. Given these deep differences, researchers claimed, in the late 1990s, that the new post-Soviet states “need no longer be treated ‘under the same roof’” (Kreindler, Reference Kreindler1997, p. 102).

Despite these diverse profiles, as we move swiftly past the 20-year anniversary of the breakup of the Soviet Union (in 1991), research suggests that the Soviet experience continues to play a formative role in current developments in language policy and education. Post-Soviet states all contend, in varying ways, with the enduring legacy of Soviet language policies that privileged Russian. Once the dominant and official language of the Soviet Union, Russian continues to play some type of influential role in the policies of these countries. As Verschik (Reference Verschik2009) noted, “all languages spoken on post-Soviet territory have been or still are in contact with Russian” (p. 299). Many scholars researching post-Soviet language policy and schooling have argued that current developments can be understood either as a reaction to or an extension of Soviet-era policies promoting Russian. Besters-Dilger (Reference Besters-Dilger2007) posited that Ukrainian-language policy “can only be understood from an historical perspective, as a reaction to the Russification policy of the twentieth century” (p. 283). In contrast, in Belarus, Woolhiser (Reference Woolhiser2007) found that “there is undeniable continuity with late Soviet-era language policies . . . under Lukashenka” (p. 379).

Systemically, all post-Soviet states also inherited school systems that worked in deliberate ways to promote certain languages (i.e., Russian and/or the titular language, depending on the era). Schools also had a history of marginalizing and undermining languages (i.e., titular language, depending on the era, and regional and many minority languages). Post-Soviet states were left with an educational infrastructure of separate schools where the primary medium of instruction was the titular language, a minority language or Russian. The extent of the division depends on the state. Latvia and Estonia, for example, were left with a bifurcated or “dual school system” (Silova, Reference Silova2006, p. xii) with separate schooling provided in the titular language and in Russian. Ukraine, however, inherited schools using Hungarian, Polish, Russian, and Romanian/Moldovan as the medium of instruction (Kulyk, Reference Kulyk2013), a practice that has strongly influenced the development of minority (or nondominant) language instruction in the post-Soviet period. I return to the theme of minority-language schooling in the next section.

Researchers continue to make sense of the region by comparing within and across former republics. Although the bulk of the research on language policy and education in post-Soviet states continues to focus on one country, scholars have directed their comparative lens across the whole post-Soviet region to generate meaning and understanding. Examinations of the continued role of Russian generally compare across the post-Soviet sphere. Examples of this approach are Fierman's (Reference Fierman2012) exploration of this topic in Central Asia, the South Caucasus, and the Baltic states, as well as Pavlenko's (Reference Pavlenko2008c) research on Russian in all the post-Soviet states. Other comparative examinations focusing on select states within this region result primarily from the linguistic and area-studies expertise of a distinct team of researchers. This select comparison of post-Soviet states is evidenced in Silova, Mead, and Palandjian's (in press) analysis of place-making in Latvian-, Armenian-, and Ukrainian-language primers, and in Nedelcu, Iucu, and Ciolan's (2010–11) examination of student perceptions of the “other” in linguistically separated schools.

Notably, research has begun to shift away from transitology, or “the perspective that continued to organize the world in flat Cold War binaries of capitalist West and Communist East” (Chari & Verdery, Reference Chari and Verdery2009, p. 9). Researchers now extend their comparisons beyond the former Soviet Union. The basis of these comparisons ranges tremendously. In some cases, countries have “two related languages and correlated identities” that influence the sociopolitical dynamics, like that between Ukrainian and Russian (in Ukraine), Catalan and Castilian Spanish (in Spain), and Corsican and French (in France) (Bilaniuk & Melnyk, Reference Bilaniuk and Melnyk2008, p. 343). In other cases, language relationships, like that in Belgium between the Flemish and Dutch, serve as potentially analogous to the tension between Moldovan and Romanian in Moldova (Ciscel, Reference Ciscel2008, p. 377). Researchers have found that comparisons based on the geographic positions and aspirations of neighboring powers also are instructive. For example, Bilaniuk and Melnyk suggested Taiwan as a compelling comparative case for understanding the language situation in Ukraine. In drawing this parallel, Bilaniuk and Melnyk highlighted the high status of Russian and Mandarin vis-à-vis Ukrainian and Taiwanese, and they argued that that both Russian and Mandarin are the primary languages of geographically large neighbors that have broad geopolitical aspirations. Finally, researchers have focused on comparing the policies and practices around languages, such as for Catalan and Estonian, which were once repressed under authoritarian regimes but now experience support from democratic governments (Soler, Reference Soler2013). Post-colonial countries, like India, Peru, and Nigeria, have also emerged as points of comparison with post-Soviet states because they also contend with “standardization and the status of precolonial language(s) and with the inertial status of the colonial standard language and its speakers” (Ciscel, Reference Ciscel2008, p. 376).

Researchers have applied post-colonial theories to understand language and education policy and practice in post-Soviet countries. Scholars continue to grapple with post-socialism as an analytic construct and the relationship between post-socialism and post-colonialism. Silova (Reference Silova and Silova2010b) advocated employing the term “post-socialist” not only on a geographic basis to depict the former socialist states, but also to describe a “condition” (p. 4). Tulbure (Reference Tulbure2009) argued that a “parallel between postsocialism and postcolonialism is not only possible, but necessary for understanding the practices of dominance around the world” (p. 6). Scholars have noted the differing regional applicability of colonial models given the vastly different language histories and policies across the former Soviet Union. Even within one post-Soviet state, as research on Ukraine reveals, one can find differences and similarities with other post-colonial countries. Ukraine is distinct from other post-colonial cases because the “languages and cultures of the colonizing regimes (most notably, Russia and Poland) were closely related to those of Ukraine” (Bilaniuk & Melnyk, Reference Bilaniuk and Melnyk2008, p. 341). Ukraine was similar, however, in the domination experienced and the forcible extraction of resources. Ciscel (Reference Ciscel2008) presented Moldovan language policy and education in a post-colonial frame, noting that as in other post-colonial nation-states, “the role of language education is often complicated by competition among local languages and the language(s) of recent colonial domination” (p. 373).

Research voices and methods have continued to diversify over the past 5 years. In addition to contributions of long-standing scholars on language policy and education in the former Soviet Union (e.g., in particular, Fierman Reference Fierman2009a, Reference Fierman2009b, Reference Fierman2012; but also Hogan-Brun, Reference Hogan-Brun2010; Pavlenko, Reference Pavlenko2006, Reference Pavlenko2008b, Reference Pavlenko2008c, Reference Pavlenko, Shohamy, Barni and Ben Rafael2010), a new generation of language policy and education researchers is emerging (see, e.g., Cara, Reference Cara2010; Chevalier, Reference Chevalier2010; Pauly, Reference Pauly2009). They bring a range of disciplinary expertise to their analyses of language policy and schooling. Scholarship also reflects new collaborative efforts between researchers from within and outside their countries in question (see Bulajeva & Hogan-Brun, Reference Hogan-Brun2010; Orusbaev, Mustajoki, & Protassova, Reference Orusbaev, Mustajoki and Protassova2008). There are significant contributions from so-called insider/outsider scholars, such as Alvarez Veinguer, who had a Russian education but is from Western Europe, and Silova, who was educated in Soviet-era Latvia but received her advanced training in the United States. These complex perspectives bring multiple frames of understanding and a range of local language skills to research endeavors.

In addition to these new voices, the research methods that are used to explore language policy and education in the post-Soviet states have also grown in sophistication. Part of this methodological growth may be linked with the theoretical attention given to post-colonial approaches. On this point, Chari and Verdery (Reference Chari and Verdery2009) argued that the marriage of post-socialist and post-colonial studies “raises . . . methodological parallels” including the use of once-closed archives and “new forms of ethnographic engagement” (pp. 11–12). In addition to the use of ethnography (Alvarez Veinguer & Davis, Reference Alvarez Veinguer and Davis2007; Brown, Reference Brown2010), researchers have turned to historical analysis through archival investigations (Pauly, Reference Pauly2009), participant observation and interviews in schools (Friedman, Reference Friedman2009; Polese, Reference Polese2010), and critical discourse analysis (Silova et al., in press). For these researchers, attention to the “micro-sociolinguistic” context provides rich insights into “the forces that shape language use, and the social and political impact of language use” (Bilaniuk & Melnyk, Reference Bilaniuk and Melnyk2008, p. 357). These qualitative research methods can help draw attention to and unpack the intricacy of language, identity, and school categories. For example, Bilaniuk and Melnyk noted that in Ukraine “identity and language labels that subsume a great deal of complexity” (p. 357) may not be captured in statistical data. Ciscel (Reference Ciscel2008) echoed this concern with his note about Moldovan language norms: “care should be taken to recognize the linguistic complexity that underlies the notion of the standard” (p. 376). Together with new methods and voices, new metaphors are brought to bear on the challenges of language, policy, and education across time, space, and place. In particular, scholars have drawn on geometrical references to characterize the evolving dynamics of language across the region.

GEOMETRIC CONCEPTS

Geometric concepts have become indispensable to scholars who seek to explain the workings and outcomes of language policy and education in post-Soviet states. Terms like asymmetry, parallel, and trajectory are regularly invoked and applied to language policy and school-related practices. Such concepts help scholars organize a diverse region conceptually and make sense of commonalities and unique dynamics across the region. These geometric perspectives highlight the legacies of Soviet-era policies, persistent power imbalances, and paths of future development.

FROM SPACE TO PLACE

Many of the key contributions to the study of language policy in the former Soviet Union examine its dynamics in one specific (usually national) setting, attentive to what is meaningful about the context, but always with the rich implications that the policies, practices, and concepts that emerge from a particular case may be transferable to similar contexts. Scholarship on language policy and education in the former Soviet Union reflects the spatial turn associated with various disciplines in the humanities and the social sciences (Withers, Reference Withers2009). An array of place-based topics appear in post-Soviet language and education investigations: the ways language is produced in and through place, the management and experience of language in particular places, and the production of place through language and schooling.

The first place-based theme in recent post-Soviet research centers on language practice and identity within the dynamic environment of separate language-tracked schools. Language practices endure in post-Soviet schools and do not easily or quickly change with new policies. Evidence from Ukraine (Besters-Dilger, Reference Besters-Dilger2007; Bilaniuk, & Melnyk, Reference Bilaniuk and Melnyk2008; Kalynovs'ka, Reference Kalynovs'ka and Besters-Dilger2009; Polese, Reference Polese2010), Belarus (Giger & Sloboda, Reference Giger and Sloboda2008), and Moldova (Ciscel, Reference Ciscel2008) suggests that the categorization of a school by medium of instruction (e.g., a Ukrainian-, Moldovan- or Estonian-language school) can camouflage language dominance and practice within schools. Scholars have found that several post-Soviet schools, or at least certain subjects, remain Russian-language-dominant spaces although officially categorized as other. Giger and Sloboda (Reference Giger and Sloboda2008) highlighted the problematic categorization of schools (e.g., as Belarussian- or Russian-language) as “isomorphous in various statistics” when research has found the limited use of languages, like Belarusian, in Belarusian-track schools (p. 328). Besters-Dilger (Reference Besters-Dilger2007) identified a similar dynamic in Ukraine where some schools are categorized as Ukrainian-medium institutions, when, in fact, Russian dominates as the language of instruction. Kalynovs'ka (Reference Kalynovs'ka and Besters-Dilger2009, p. 209) labeled the educational environment in some Ukrainian schools as “hidden bilingual,” with Ukrainian as the medium of instruction and Russian used for the language of communication outside of class (particularly in the eastern and southern regions). Within schools in other states, teachers deem the titular language appropriate for only certain subjects. Chevalier (Reference Chevalier2010) noted that language use changes in rural schools based on the subject; Tuvan (a language spoken in the Republic of Tyva of the Russian Federation) is rarely used as the medium of instruction for math and science classes in Tuvan-language schools. Among the reasons interviewees provided for this in-school dynamic were the teachers’ desire to prepare students for their future study, which would be entirely in Russian (starting in 10th grade), as well as the lack of Tuvan-language pedagogical resources (Chevalier, Reference Chevalier2010).

A second theme within this spatial turn of language-related research concerns the ways teachers mediate place and policy. In this scholarship, teachers emerge as professionals who relax or enforce borders between language and national identity. Schools provide a relatively free space to make pedagogical and ideological decisions around language. Polese (Reference Polese2010) explored the ways that teachers in Odessa act “as mediators” of national-level discourse on language (p. 50). Polese looked at the “dilemma of agencies” in Ukraine, “for state actors and agents have to mediate between the Ministry and the citizens” (p. 50), and found that in Odessa educators experience relative freedom from complying “with official instructions [which] allows for the development of a Ukrainian identity in timing and modalities that vary from teacher to teacher, and from one student to another” (p. 58). Recent research has confirmed that language ideologies and policies inform teachers’ pedagogical practices in the post-Soviet context. Friedman's (Reference Friedman2009) detailed ethnographic research in Ukraine concluded that an ideology of “pure language” inspired Ukrainian teachers to deliver corrective feedback to elementary-age students’ use of Russian forms when speaking Ukrainian (p. 347). As students responded to teachers’ correction or self-initiated corrective practices,

Finally, in her ethnographic research on teachers as language policy actors in Estonia, Brown (Reference Brown2010) found that the historic (i.e., Soviet and pre-Soviet era) exclusion and discrimination against the regional language of Võro limited the teachers’ options to use their classrooms as a base for language revitalization. The highly decentralized and voluntary regional language policy allowed teachers to “reinscribe” or reincorporate Võro in site-specific ways, including adding it as an after-school class (Brown, Reference Brown2010, p. 301).

A third, and final, place-based theme focuses on the role of place and language in the formal curriculum and the way curriculum functions to naturalize the connections among a people, their language, and their country. This research focuses both on historic and contemporary cases in the post-Soviet sphere. Pauly (Reference Pauly2010) contributed to the discussion of the many ways language enters into a school's formal curriculum and serves to promote broader political agendas, through a detailed historical analysis of the promotion of language and local studies (kraieznavsto) in Ukraine during the 1920s. Silova et al. (in press) developed the idea of “pedagogies of space” to highlight the textual social and cultural construction of place in contemporary primers in Armenia, Latvia, and Ukraine. As part of their critical discourse analysis of these introductory language textbooks, Silova et al. concluded, “Pedagogies of space, as part of the broader national education system, appear as especially crucial cogs in the discursive system that builds and maintains a linkage between particular spaces and territories and particular peoples and cultures.” Brown (Reference Brown, Gorter, Marten and van Mensel2012) contributed to the growing tradition of linguistic landscape research (Gorter, Marten, & van Mensel, Reference Gorter, Marten and van Mensel2012; Pavlenko, Reference Pavlenko, Shohamy, Barni and Ben Rafael2010; Shohamy & Gorter, Reference Shohamy and Gorter2009) in an examination of place-claiming and language revitalization in rural Estonian school spaces. Brown's (Reference Brown, Gorter, Marten and van Mensel2012) research on the school-based attempts to be more inclusive of lesser-used languages points to the “gradual pace of cultural change especially in schools” (p. 294).

FUTURE SCHOLARSHIP

The scholarship on language policy and education of the last 5 years suggests several theoretical, methodological, and topical areas for growth. As mentioned in this article, an increasing number of researchers are exploring both the relevance of post-colonial theories for understanding the transformations and processes in the post-Soviet region and the productive confluence of post-socialist and post-colonial interpretations for these countries (Chari & Verdery, Reference Chari and Verdery2009; Silova, Reference Silova and Silova2010b). Robust areas for future development are in refining and advancing these theoretical explorations in the post-Communist world and exploring the potential applicability of neo-colonialist perspectives. Several of these theoretical frames could be used, for example, to situate and analyze the new federal law on education in the Russian Federation—one that, in part, aims to standardize education and do away with any national components of regional schooling. Additionally, few researchers analyze language and education policy formation, practice, or appropriation as a neoliberal development, which would be an additional fruitful area for investigation.

Methodologically, research on language policy and education has benefited from the micro-sociological and anthropological insights on language choice and practice. The increased use of qualitative research methods including school-based ethnographies, interviewing, and participant observation (Brown, Reference Brown2010; Friedman, Reference Friedman2009; Polese, Reference Polese2010) has assisted in this development. That said, a minority of researchers who are exploring issues related to the interface of education and language are engaged in extended qualitative research in the region. The fields of applied linguistics, comparative education, and post-Soviet studies could also benefit from directing some of the current interest in linguistic landscapes—evident in the areas of language of advertising (Ciscel, Reference Ciscel2008; Orusbaev et al., Reference Orusbaev, Mustajoki and Protassova2008); and language and urban centers (Giger & Sloboda, Reference Giger and Sloboda2008; Pavlenko, Reference Pavlenko, Shohamy, Barni and Ben Rafael2010)—to language use in the educational sphere (both informal and formal schooling).

Topically, an imbalance exists in the regional and linguistic focus of current research. Reflected in this article is the geographic asymmetry of case studies—more researchers are focusing on language and schooling in Ukraine and the Baltic states than any other post-Soviet country or region. The linguistic diversity of the Russian Federation, for example, is underresearched or underpublished in English, though Dowler's (Reference Dowler2001) historic investigation of the schooling in Russia's eastern nationalities and Bloch's (Reference Bloch2004) research from the 1990s on the Evenki set the groundwork for 21st-century scholars. The schooling of national minorities in other post-Soviet states likewise remains an underinvestigated topic. An enhanced understanding of the ways Russian is used, and protected, in schooling in the Russian-dominant areas of the countries of the former Soviet Union (e.g., northeastern Estonia, Crimea, and the Transnistrian Republic) also awaits research.

The policy response to the rise in popularity of and demand for education in multiple global languages (e.g. English, Turkish, and Chinese) presents a fascinating comparative opportunity to explore state policies and the on-the-ground response to available choices. Research into bilingual and immersion strategies in post-Soviet states as a way to promote the titular, minority, or global languages offers an additional fruitful arena for exploration. Finally, researchers have yet to delve into the role of class and (un)equal access to certain types of language instruction. The language and education decisions of the wealthy as well as the more underprivileged populations offer potentially fruitful topics for research.

In conclusion, the research reviewed in this article expands our understanding of the legacies of the Soviet-era language and education policies 20 years after the collapse, while bringing to the fore the new directions and commitments. The use of geometric concepts like asymmetry, parallels, and trajectories as well as the attention to place in research on recent developments underscore several points. First, states inherited schools with a Soviet-era commitment to multilingualism, but have been challenged to transform these institutions into new types of post-Soviet plurilingual institutions—ones that generally promote the titular language, create space for instruction in minority languages, and provide education in a foreign language (or two). As research reveals, this transformation occurs in a context where Russian retains significant influence and prestige even two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Second, evidence from these countries speaks powerfully to the ways teachers, students, and parents use school space dynamically to negotiate community boundaries and foster particular national identities through deliberate language practice. The complex sociolinguistic space of post-Soviet schools helps to cultivate outcomes that shape civic and national integration. The ways in which sociopolitical reconfigurations, education reforms, and regional demographic change shape and are shaped by language and school policies present promising opportunities for new research in the post-Soviet sphere.